Three Strikes Against ACTA In European Parliament Today

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Infopolicy – Rick Falkvinge

Infopolicy – Rick Falkvinge

Three heavyweight committees in the European Parliament gave their voting recommendations on ACTA today. All three gave the same recommendation: reject ACTA. This means that today, the European Parliament issued three very hard strikes against ACTA.

What happened today was the first steps in a long chain that ends with the final vote in all of the European Parliament, which is the vote where ACTA ultimately lives or dies. If it is defeated on the floor of the European Parliament, then it’s a permakill. Boom, headshot. But on the way to that vote, a number of specialized committees will say what they think from their perspective.

The committee that “owns” the issue of ACTA, the so-called INTA committee (International Trade), is the committee giving the final recommendation to the European Parliament as a whole. But as input to the INTA recommendation, four other committees will say what they think. Three of those – ITRE (Industry, Research, Energy), JURI (Legal affairs), and LIBE (Civil Liberties) – voted today.

They all voted to recommend rejection of ACTA, and therefore, effectively recommend that the European Parliament kill it dead. But this all happened with very narrow margins, defying an onslaught of procedural tricks and attempts of delaying, so the game is far from over.

Still, it is a sign of changing times. Rather than reciting amendments, political detailed minutiae and vote counts, I’d like to look at the bigger picture.

Perhaps the strongest indication of just how much times are changing is the fact that the monopoly maximalists – those politicians who are firmly planted in corporativist rule – have always had their way, especially in the committee of Legal Affairs which is full of lawyerspeak. At the same time, Pirate has been a dirty word, almost synonymous with criminal. Compare the first two votes today, in the Industry and Legal Affairs committees, and the Members of the European Parliament who were responsible for drafting the opinions of those committees:

Marielle Gallo. Born in the 1940s.Classic and infamous copyright maximalist.Opinion Defeated.

Amelia Andersdotter. Born in the 1980s. Representative for the Pirate Party.Opinion Carried.

To see a Pirate Representative get her opinion (“reject ACTA”) voted through to the next step, whereas the copyright maximalist gets her opinion (“accept, embrace, and love ACTA”) shot down in the Legal Affairs committee, is a complete breach of a crucial tipping point.

The ACTA battle as a whole is far from over, though. The majorities were narrow. And the overall net liberty war, beyond ACTA, is definitely far from over. I just wanted to highlight how symbolic it is that leglislative text written by pirates is now carried.

Today, we had three important victories in individual skirmishes.

Next, the DEVE committee – (Third World) Development – votes on ACTA on June 4. The INTA committee’s vote, the final step before the main vote, happens on June 21. Then, the European Parliament as a whole votes early July – presumably 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th. That’s the end-of-level boss fight.

We’re winning, but only because we’re fighting hard to win. This is not over.

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About The Author: Rick Falkvinge

Rick is the founder of the first Pirate Party and is a political evangelist, traveling around Europe and the world to talk and write about ideas of a sensible information policy. He has a tech entrepreneur background and loves whisky.

Basically, if the EU doesn’t join ACTA, it is dead. A “free-trade” agreement between the USA and Japan, where the US refuses to change anything to accommodate it, is not going to change the world for the worse.

Further, it is a very important signal that there’s no more free admission for Hollywood to the legislative floors.

I can only tks this blog and your twitters that alerted Me and make me, as many i hope and believe, react and flood with mails against this attempt to the legacy Europe should give to all the World:
Freedom of speech is priceless!

While I’m at it, I also want to credit the Swedish Pirate Party’s other rep in the European Parliament, Christian Engström. He was the tie-breaker in the JURI vote; if he had not been there and voted no, the JURI vote would not have been won (assuming a different person would have voted for ACTA in his stead).

So both Pirate MEPs, Andersdotter and Engström, were instrumental in today’s victory.

I’d just like to note that today is the 6th anniversary of the raid on The Pirate Bay. Without that, the Pirate Party might never have grown as large as it has today. It might never have entered the European parliament. And without pirates in parliament, there might not have been as much noise about and attention on ACTA inside the actual parliament. And maybe, just maybe, it would have passed a long time ago, instead of facing these rather humiliating defeats.

Mr Falkvinge, I read on ZDnet.co.uk, whose David Meyer had been informed of this by an e-mail from the European Commission, that the EU can only ratify ACTA if all member states have ratified. Given the Dutch total rejection, this means that the EU cannot ratify ACTA at all, even if the EP should vote for ACTA. The e-mail also says that no individual member states will ratify ACTA if the EU will not ratify it; that would mean that the Dutch rejection prevents all other member states from individually ratifying ACTA. So the battle seems to be over. What is your take on this?

“That really is what the European Commission is telling me. To give a precise quote: if a member state turns down the agreement, “ACTA will stay a valid international agreement but the EU and its member states will not deposit their instrument of ratification until all member states and the European Parliament have ratified it”. If you don’t deposit your instrument of ratification, the rules say, you don’t play.” — David Meyer 6 February, 2012 08:08

[…] The first three key votes (from three specific committees) happened today, and while it was close, all three came out with recommendations to reject ACTA. As Rick Falkvinge points out, one telling point is if you look at the votes on the Committee on […]

[…] The first three key votes (from three specific committees) happened today, and while it was close, all three came out with recommendations to reject ACTA. As Rick Falkvinge points out, one telling point is if you look at the votes on the Committee on […]

[…] to a blog post by Rick Falkvinge, founder of the Pirate Party, who says he won’t celebrate until ACTA is defeated by the European Parliament as a whole: They all voted to recommend rejection of ACTA, and therefore, effectively recommend that the […]

[…] to a blog post by Rick Falkvinge, founder of the Pirate Party, who says he won’t celebrate until ACTA is defeated by the European Parliament as a whole: They all voted to recommend rejection of ACTA, and therefore, effectively recommend that […]

[…] down with three resolutions in favour of rejecting it and calling for IPR law reform. Finally, three of the European Parliamentary committees rejected ACTA. There are three more to go, and I’ve already been in touch with the committee […]

[…] are and work towards reform. Meanwhile, the Pirate Party has been fighting against ACTA, with Amelia Andersdotter and Christian Engström leading the charge at the EU Parliamentary committees. The Pirate Party […]

About The Author

Rick is the founder of the first Pirate Party and is a political evangelist, traveling around Europe and the world to talk and write about ideas of a sensible information policy. He has a tech entrepreneur background and loves whisky.